Woodbridge High School student Abby Steinberg, center, and fellow students who support her effort on the nationwide demonstration series to protest for gun control at Woodbridge High School in Irvine on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. (Photo by Kyusung Gong/Contributing Photographer)

They call themselves the “mass shooting generation,” but that’s a moniker many teens are determined to lose.

From the shores of California to Washington, D.C., students are rising up, protesting and planning a series of national demonstrations demanding gun control legislation for one simple reason.

They want to live.

“Every day I have a sense that something might happen, that we’re just waiting for it,” says Abigail Steinberg, a 17-year-old senior at Woodbridge High in Irvine. “It’s like we’re sitting ducks.”

Woodbridge High School student Abby Steinberg, who will join the nationwide protest for gun control, at Woodbridge High School in Irvine on Tuesday, February 20, 2018. (Photo by Kyusung Gong/Contributing Photographer)

Marco Vargas is an 18-year-old senior at Nava Preparatory Academy in East Los Angeles and says, “As a city kid and a public school student, gunshots have become normalized.

“I think about it happening at my school.”

The first national movement will take place March 14 and asks students to leave classes for 17 minutes, one minute for each person killed last week in Florida. The second is March 24 and calls for marches in local communities and at the nation’s capital. The third is April 20 and has high school students walking out on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

Along with other students across America, Steinberg and Vargas have reason to be scared.

There have been at least an additional eight shooting incidents at schools in which there were no injuries, but guns were fired.

At Salvador B. Castro Middle School in Los Angeles on Feb. 1, four children were injured by gunfire. Two children suffered minor injuries. A 15-year-old girl was shot in the wrist. A 15-year-old boy was shot in the head. The boy is expected to be OK.

“I was on campus last night and joined many of you who sheltered in place for a long period,” University President Tomás D. Morales said Jan. 11. “While inconvenient, our top priority will always be the safety of each member of the campus community.”

No university president or school principal should ever have to make such a statement. But they are.

Far too often.

In the last five years, Moms Demand Action has documented nearly 300 school shootings, and the number of shootings this year are double the same time last year.

“I think we’ve hit a breaking point,” says Steinberg, who plans to attend college next year. “Sandy Hook (in Newtown, Conn., where six staff members and 20 youngsters were killed Dec. 14, 2012) was the first one I remember.

“We feel so under pressure.”

Vargas recalls there was a drive-by at the tennis courts near his school. “Everybody was screaming.

“It sucks that we don’t take time to step back and examine that this is our reality.”

Political winds change quickly

The Florida slaughter appears to be both tipping point and sea change.

Additionally, President Donald Trump this week moved from anger to action.

First, Trump infuriated students on Monday by mixing politics and tragedy with a tweet, “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable.

“They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion.”

Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!

While it is a long journey to become law, the president’s bump stock move risks alienating his base and appears as bold as it is significant.

Consider that for a brief period after the Las Vegas horror in October, it appeared that Congress would take actual action on outlawing bump stocks.

Even the National Rifle Association indicated support. Later, however, the NRA opposed the ban and nothing happened.

But now, instead of bullets a political wind is at the students’ backs.

This week, the president’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, went so far as to say the administration had not “closed the door” on supporting a ban on assault-style rifles.

Consider that in Trump’s 2015 book, “Crippled America,” he defended what even police call “assault-style rifles.”

But political winds shift quickly. On Thursday, Trump gave sugar to NRA leaders, tweeting they are “great people and great patriots!”

What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the @NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots. They love our Country and will do the right thing. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The president went on to tweet that arming at least 20 percent of teachers “would also serve as a deterrent to the cowards that do this.”

In for the long haul

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence states that more than one in five teenagers has witnessed a shooting. The nonprofit adds that, on average, seven children and teens die from gunfire every day.

But are three national demonstrations in a two-month period overkill?

Vargas explains he has a different focus than some students. Instead of walking out, he will register people to vote.

Mass shootings are a national crisis, Vargas explains. In his neighborhood “everyone has experience with gun violence.”

Steinberg allows that her realistic goal isn’t to ban all firearms, but at least to ban assault rifles such as AR-15s.

“I don’t want to alienate people,” Steinberg allows. “We have to come to a middle ground.

“It’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not about marching on one day,” the high school senior declares. “I’ll march until something is changed.”

David Whiting is the award-winning Metro Columnist at The Orange County Register. He also can be heard on radio, has served as a television news anchor and speaks frequently at organizations and universities. He previously was an assistant managing editor and has received Columbia University’s Race and Ethnicity Award, National Headliner awards and Sigma Delta Chi’s Public Service Award. He recently was invited to participate in an exchange program with Chinese journalists. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School for Journalism. He is a two-time Ironman, a two-time Boston marathoner and has climbed the highest mountains in Africa and North and South America.

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